The Mayor's Vision for Cycling in London
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THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON – An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners COPYRIGHT Greater London Authority March 2013 Published by Greater London Authority City Hall The Queen’s Walk More London London SE1 2AA www.london.gov.uk enquiries 020 7983 4100 minicom 020 7983 4458 ISBN Photographs © Transport for London Copies of this report are available from www.london.gov.uk THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON – An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners CONTENTS FOREWORD BY THE MAYOR OF LONDON 4 FOREWORD BY THE COMMISSIONER 7 KEY OUTCOMES 9 A TUBE NETWORK FOR THE BIKE 10 SAFER STREETS 18 MORE PEOPLE TRAVELLING BY BIKE 24 BETTER PLACES FOR EVERYONE 30 THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON – An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners 4 FOREWORD BY THE MAYOR OF LONDON Imagine if we could invent something that cut road and rail crowding, cut noise, cut pollution and ill- health – something that improved life for everyone, quite quickly, without the cost and disruption of new roads and railways. Well, we invented it 200 years ago: the bicycle. Like so many of the best things, the bike owes a lot to London. In 1818, at his Covent Garden coachworks, one Denis Johnson – not necessarily a relation – helped create the first bicycle in something like its modern form, with a curved metal frame and metal spokes for the wheels. After that early inventorial spurt, I confess, London rather forgot the Johnson ‘velocipede’. Gyratories and flyovers carved up the city. Humbler roads sprouted railings, roundabouts and fast-moving traffic. Ownership of a car became how an ambitious young man showed off to an upwardly-mobile young woman. But in the past decade, cycling on the Transport for London (TfL) road network has almost trebled. The Thames bridges throng with commuter cyclists, wearing colours not found in nature. In the cooler parts of east London, a bike is the fifth limb for everyone under 30. Hundreds of thousands of people have discovered that their transport future is lying in their garage under a pile of disused barbecue equipment. The success of our policies to increase cycling means we must now greatly increase our provision for cyclists – and, above all, for the huge numbers of Londoners who would like to cycle, but presently feel unable to. In this document, I set out my plans for substantial – eventually transformative – change. Cycling will be treated not as niche, marginal, or an afterthought, but as what it is: an integral part of the transport network, with the capital spending, road space and traffic planners’ attention befitting that role. Among the greatest joys of London’s Olympics were our triumphs in cycling. I today announce that the main cross-London physical legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games will be a proper network of cycle routes throughout the city, a substantial increase in cycling, and all the benefits – fitness, enjoyment and easy travel for millions, cleaner air and less traffic for all – that will follow. THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON – An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners 5 My flagship route – a true Crossrail for the bicycle – will run for at least 15 miles, very substantially segregated, from the western suburbs, through the heart of the Capital, to the City, Canary Wharf and Barking in the east. It will, we believe, be the longest substantially-segregated continuous cycle route of any city in Europe. It will use a new segregated cycle track along, among other places, the Victoria Embankment and the Westway flyover. The Westway, the ultimate symbol of how the urban motorway tore up our cities, will become the ultimate symbol of how we are claiming central London for the bike. I want cycling to be normal, a part of everyday life. I want it to be something you feel comfortable doing in your ordinary clothes, something you hardly think about. I want more women cycling, more older people cycling, more black and minority ethnic Londoners cycling, more cyclists of all social backgrounds – without which truly mass participation can never come. As well as the admirable Lycra-wearers, and the enviable east Londoners on their fixed-gear bikes, I want more of the kind of cyclists you see in Holland, going at a leisurely pace on often clunky steeds. I will do all this by creating a variety of routes for the variety of cyclists I seek. There will be greatly-improved fast routes on busy roads for cyclists in a hurry. And there will be direct, continuous, quieter routes on side streets for new cyclists, cautious cyclists and all sorts of other people who would rather take it more slowly. But nothing I do will affect cyclists’ freedom to use any road they choose. I will more than double London’s cycling budget – to a total of almost £400m over the next three years, two-and-a-half times more than previously planned. In 2015, we will be spending £145m a year on cycling, or roughly £18 a head, up with the best in Germany and almost on a par with the Netherlands. Over the next 10 years, cycle spending will total £913m, more than treble the previously-planned levels. There will be particularly dramatic increases in spending earmarked for Outer London. I will change how I spend our money to focus far more heavily on serious, meaningful improvements to routes and junctions. I have appointed a Cycling Commissioner, who has helped draw up these policies, to drive them forward and win support for them from the other bodies whose backing we need. In addition to our record funding towards delivering this vision, I will be looking to the boroughs to also deliver extra funding and resources, in parallel, because of the benefits this vision will deliver for all. I am, as you may know, a passionate cyclist. In my first term, very little gave me more pride than what we achieved for the bicycle: the world’s best hire scheme, and more cyclists in London than at any time since the arrival of mass motoring. At the last mayoral election, cycling policy united the political right, who applaud the freedom and individualism it embodies, and the left. In my second term, changing London to make it friendlier to cyclists is one of my most important goals. But at the very heart of this strategy is my belief that helping cycling will not just help cyclists. It will create better places for everyone. It means less traffic, more trees, more places to sit and eat a sandwich. It means new life, new vitality and lower crime on underused streets. It means more seats on the Tube, less competition for a parking place and fewer cars in front of yours at the lights. THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON – An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners 6 I do not control the vast majority of London’s roads, so many of the improvements I seek will take time. They will depend on the coooperation of others, such as the boroughs, Royal Parks, Network Rail and central government. I do not promise perfection; I do not promise that London, a very different city from Amsterdam or Copenhagen, will quickly come to resemble those places. But what I do say is that this document marks a profound shift in my ambitions and intentions for the bicycle in London. Boris Johnson Mayor of London THE MAYOR’S VISION FOR CYCLING IN LONDON – An Olympic Legacy for all Londoners 7 FOREWORD BY THE COMMISSIONER Exactly 150 years ago, with the first underground railway, London established itself as a world leader in city transport. Since then, TfL and its predecessors have been at the forefront of every major development in the field. In the early years of the last century, the Metropolitan Railway and the Underground Group created the commuter suburb. In the early years of this one, TfL showed how a city could turn around a public transport system in long-term decline, transform its centre with a congestion charge, and establish one of the world’s most successful bike hire schemes. In urban transport, cycling is now at the cutting edge. Across the western world, from Paris to New York, from Edinburgh to Dublin, forward-thinking cities are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in the bicycle, knowing that well-designed schemes can deliver benefits far greater than their relatively modest costs. Because transport is not just how you get around. It is part of what shapes a city, for good and for ill. Cycling shapes a city – for all its people, cyclists or not – in ways that are almost always good. This document promises ambitious new cycle routes and infrastructure. They are a step-change in cycling provision. They will accelerate the huge progress London has already made in this area, and I commit TfL to funding and delivering them as one of its highest priorities. But I am committed, too, because I believe this is about so much more than routes for cyclists. It is about the huge health and economic benefits that greater cycling can bring. It is about improving London’s streets and places for everyone, including those with no intention of getting on a bike. And it is about helping the whole transport system meet the enormous demands that will be placed on it. Before the end of this decade, London’s population will reach nine million. The city’s economy continues to grow. Even with our unprecedented investment in the Tube and rail network, parts of it will still be under pressure.